Boston a novel
casual few in a court-room. Posterity, hear him!
“What I say is that I am innocent, not only of the Braintree crime, but
also of the Bridgewater crime. That I am not only innocent of these two
crimes, but in all my life I have never stolen and I have never killed
and I have never spilled blood. That is what I want to say. And it is
not all. Not only am I innocent of these two crimes, not only in all
my life I have never stolen, never killed, never spilled blood, but I
have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to eliminate crime
from the earth.
“Everybody that knows these two arms knows very well that I did not
need to go into the streets and kill a man or try to take money. I
can live by my two hands and live well. But besides that, I can live
even without work with my hands for other people. I have had plenty of
chance to live independently and to live what the world conceives to be
a higher life than to gain our bread with the sweat of our brow.
“My father in Italy is in a good condition. I could have come back in
Italy and he would have welcomed me every time with open arms. Even if
I come back there with not a cent in my pocket, my father could have
give me a position, not to work but to make business, or to oversee
upon the land that he owns.... But I have refused myself of what are
considered the commodity and glories of life, the prides of a life
of a good position, because in my consideration it is not right to
exploit man. I have refused to go in business because I understand
that business is a speculation on profit upon certain people that must
depend upon the business man, and I do not consider that that is right
and therefore I refuse to do that.
“Now, I should say that I am not only innocent of all these things,
not only have I never committed a real crime in my life--though some
sins but not crimes--not only have I struggled all my life to eliminate
crimes, the crimes that the official law and the moral law condemns,
but also the crime that the moral law and the official law sanction and
sanctify,--the exploitation and the oppression of the man by the man,
and if there is a reason why I am here as a guilty man, if there is a
reason why you in a few minutes can doom me, it is this reason and none
else....
“We have proved that there could not have been another judge on the
face of the earth more prejudiced, more cruel and more hostile than you
have been against us. We have proven that. Still they refuse the new
trial. We know, and you know in your heart, that you have been against
us from the very beginning, before you see us. Before you see us you
already know that we were radicals, that we were underdogs, that we
were the enemy of the institutions that you can believe in good faith
in their goodness--I don’t want to discuss that--and that it was easy
at the time of the first trial to get a verdict of guilty.
“We know that you have spoken yourself, and have spoke your hostility
against us, and your despisement against us with friends of yours
on the train, at the University Club of Boston, at the Golf club
of Worcester. I am sure that if the people who know all what you
say against us have the civil courage to take the stand, maybe Your
Honor--I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an
old father--but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this
time....
“We believe more now than ever that war is wrong, and we are against
war more now than ever, and I am glad to be on the doomed scaffold if
I can say to mankind, ‘Look out; you are in a catacomb of the flower
of mankind. For what? All that they say to you, all that they have
promised to you--it was a lie, it was an illusion, it was a cheat,
it was a fraud, it was a crime. They promised you liberty. Where is
liberty? They promised you prosperity. Where is prosperity? They have
promised you elevation. Where is the elevation?’
“From the day that I went in Charlestown, the misfortunate, the
population of Charlestown, has doubled in number. Where is the moral
good that the war has given to the world? Where is the spiritual
progress that we have achieved from the war? Where are the security of
life, the security of the things that we possess for our necessity?
Where is the respect for human life? Where are the respect and the
admiration for the good characteristics and the good of the human
nature? Never before the war as now have there been so many crimes, so
much corruption, so much degeneration as there is now.
“This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the
most low and misfortunate creature of the earth--I would not wish to
any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty
of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I
have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I
have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself;
but I am so convinced to be right that you can only kill me once but
if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other
times, I would live again to do what I have done already.
“I have finished. Thank you.”
XV
It was “Web” Thayer’s turn. He, too, rose to speak. As it turned out,
he rose to apologize; to plead that it was not his fault. A singular
fact, which Vanzetti had noted about the legal machinery of the august
Commonwealth--he had commented upon it to Cornelia--that everybody
put the responsibility on somebody else! The arresting policemen had
said it was not their fault, they had been obeying the orders of their
superiors. The jailers one and all said the same thing. The chief
officer of the jail had said that the higher powers would not permit
this and that. Members of the jury had said that they had had to follow
the instructions of the learned judge. And now here was the learned
judge--at the very crisis of events--putting the blame upon the jury!
The Supreme Judicial Court had said that the trial judge had had the
final say as to the facts. And now here was the trial judge putting the
responsibility upon the Supreme Judicial Court!
Could it be that even “Web,” the insensitive, had been awed by the
majesty of Vanzetti’s words? Could it be that “Web,” the vainglorious,
was assailed by a doubt about himself? Be that as it may, the braggart
was gone from his manner, and his voice was no longer a thin strip of
steel, but trembling and mumbling. He said:
“Under the law of Massachusetts, the jury says whether a defendant is
guilty or innocent. The Court has absolutely nothing to do with that
question. The law of Massachusetts provides that a judge cannot deal in
any way with the facts. As far as he can go under our law is to state
the evidence.
“During the trial many exceptions were taken. Those exceptions were
taken to the Supreme Judicial Court. That Court, after examining the
entire record, after examining all the exceptions--that Court in its
final words said, ‘The verdicts of the jury should stand; exceptions
overruled.’ That being true there is only one thing that this Court
can do. It is not a matter of discretion. It is a matter of statutory
requirement, and that being true there is only one duty that now
devolves upon this Court, and that is to pronounce the sentence.
“It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Nicola Sacco,
suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of
electricity through your body within the week beginning on Sunday, the
tenth day of July, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred
and Twenty-seven. This is the sentence of the law.
“It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Bartolomeo
Vanzetti....”
Here Vanzetti broke in: “Wait a minute, please, Your Honor. May I speak
a minute with my lawyer, Mr. Thompson?”
Said Thompson: “I do not know what he has to say.”
Said Judge Thayer: “I think I should pronounce the sentence ...
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, suffer the punishment of death....”
But here came Nick, with one of his wild cries: “You know I am
innocent. Those are the same words I pronounced six years ago. You
condemn two innocent men.”
But the mumbling voice went on, in the solemn legal formula: “... by
the passage of a current of electricity through your body within the
week beginning on Sunday, the tenth day of July, in the year of our
Lord, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-seven. This is the sentence
of the law.” It was customary for the judge to add, “And may God have
mercy on your souls.” But for some reason Judge Thayer omitted this
part of the formula.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SUPERSALESMAN
I
Cornelia Thornwell would wake up in the middle of the night, trembling,
in a cold sweat. They were going to murder Bart and Nick! Impossible to
fool herself any longer; they did actually intend to do it!
For hours she would lie, evolving plans; going over in her mind the
names of persons she knew who might be capable of a concern for either
justice or mercy. She would turn on the light by her bedside and make
notes of things to be done during the day. Betty and Joe, who now lived
in the next apartment, would come in at daylight and find her writing
letters. Impossible to rest!
There being no more hope from the courts, the energies of the defense
were turned to the Governor of the Commonwealth, who had the power to
pardon, or to commute the sentences to life-imprisonment. Legally, his
power was subject to the consent of his “council,” a sort of state
cabinet; but then, he had power over this “council,” being what was
known as a “strong” man, accustomed to having his own way.
Alvan Tufts Fuller was his name, and he had begun life as a trick
bicycle-rider and racer. He went into the bicycle-repair business, and
prospered, and when the bicycle gave way to the automobile, he stayed
on the top of the wave, and obtained the agency for the Packard car
in New England, and also in Pennsylvania, and of the Cadillac car in
New England. Upon every machine sold in these territories he received
twenty per cent of the purchase price. Since the Packard limousine
was a five thousand dollar car, it amounted to a great sum, in the
neighborhood of two million dollars a year. “Allie” Fuller, trick
bicycle-rider, was now the richest man in New England; authorities
differed as to whether his fortune was twenty millions or forty, but
as a rule they guessed the higher sum.
He had begun his political career as a “Roosevelt Progressive,” but
that thin veneer had worn off quickly. He had been elected to Congress
for two terms, but had been too busy to attend the sessions--except
when it was necessary to make a speech denouncing the “Reds.” He had
served four years as lieutenant-governor, and had earned the enmity
of the Thornwell clan by insisting upon an exposure of Rupert Alvin’s
purchase of the legislature in connection with the Elevated Railway
bill. Fuller played the rôle of an “independent” in politics, stern
and incorruptible; he made a grand gesture of refusing to take his
salary--thereby obtaining advertisement worth many times the amount.
He wanted the legislators and officials to have the same scorn for
small sums of money; if they had possessed an income of two millions a
year, they would doubtless have obliged him. As it was, they took their
salaries of fifteen hundred dollars, and eked them out by means of tips
from the lobbyists who swarmed to the State House, or the hotel-rooms
nearby.
The system of universal graft which is American government was going
on, and Fuller knew that it was going on. Once in a while some
“reformer” or “crank” or “sore-head” would force an exposure, whereupon
the lieutenant-governor would leap up and make a fuss in the papers,
and the public would know that they had an honest public servant. The